Three-bed Ashleigh semi in a great location

JUST parallel to the Skehard Road in Cork, and with south-facing back gardens, is 20 Ashleigh Gardens, near amenities in Blackrock, Ballintemple and Douglas, as well as Mahon’s shopping centre and employment base.

This extended three bed semi is in a mix of houses with an architectural feature that’s quite up-to-date, but with a 1970s’ provenance — cedar planking as a facade treatment.

Cedar sheeting was all the design rage in the noughties, but really it was only aping an earlier heyday of perhaps four decades earlier.

The modern arty vogue is to let the timber weather untreated, and to age to a silvery grey but, hey, you don’t see too many remnants of this naturally greying dogma in Cork’s suburbs: pretty much every cedar hung house of past decades has gone down Grecian 2000 ranges of reds, oranges, or brown.

No 20 now has the dark brown cedar treatment, and the house within now has up to 1,750 sq ft of space according to selling agents Savills, if you include the adjoining garage and a converted attic with top floor multi-purpose room plus shower room.

Auctioneer Clare O’Sullivan of Savills offers a guide price of €350,000. There’s a new kitchen gone in behind the garage, making for a 21’ wide by 9’ deep dining room/kitchen.

Then, there are two reception rooms, the larger to the front with a connecting door to the back one, a cloak/store room off the parquet-floored hall.

Next up are three bedrooms, one with particularly good wardrobe space, main family bathroom with bath and separate corner shower, while there’s a further stairs up to the attic level, with 26’ by 13’ room with a shower room off in the corner.

The area is quiet as it is off the Skehard Road, and there are national schools for girls and boys a few minutes walk away inside the public park just above at Beaumont.